Scarlett Willow

I’ve come home to Sussex, to the warm bosom of my family this Christmas, and for the first time in years it’s a full house: all three sisters and their husband/boyfriends. J’s been on son-in-law duty (i.e. much flattering of my mother and drinking with my father.) He’s sat patiently during lengthy table conversations in which we women reminisce and rant, counsel and console (J said it’s like a home counties hybrid of Gossip Girl and The Brady Bunch.) Whenever it starts to verge on group therapy, all the men drift off in search of the nearest TV...

My parents, ever concerned about their children’s hectic city lives, have insisted that we all just ‘relax/take it easy/put our feet up’ - which means I’ve been pretty much supine since Christmas Day. Cooking and eating are high on the list of activities here, and as I’m no good at the former I’ve had to focus all my energy on the latter. My body is now yearning to walk or run, but the inclement weather has forced me to remain slothful.

On Boxing Day, we all watched family home movies that, miraculously, none of us girls could remember seeing before. My father had a giant boxy camera thing in the 80’s that he lugged about on his shoulder. Although I found it excruciating at the time, I now applaud his initiative to go and film us all at school - on the school bus, at assembly, at lunch, in dance classes – surrounded by all the adorable faces of our childhood chums.

Its so nostalgia inducing, I feel compelled to digitise the film and send it to the girls I’m still in contact with 25 years on: the once fresh-faced pixies who now, like me, trawl the beauty columns in women’s magazines in search of elixirs of youth. When I hit thirty I morphed from being ‘young’ to ‘looking good for my age’. I suddenly couldn’t kid myself that those were dehydration lines any longer and it’s been a quest ever since.

An aforementioned Pixie got me hooked on Oskia this year (www.oskia.com) Its a British natural skincare range that zones in on premature ageing and skin cell rebuilding, using highly effective, nutritionally designed ingredients. Every month they showcase one of those nutrients on their website and culinary wizard Thomasina Miers uses it to inspire a recipe (this month it’s Niacinimide which is found in abundance in sweet potatoes. Check out her Sweet Potato and Feta Frittata.)

Niacinimide is in their Bedtime Beauty Boost, which is now a firm favourite of mine. It feeds my skin overnight with 11 beauty boost ‘actives’, which gives me a gorgeous dewy glow in the morning (Pixie says it’s like one of our midnight feasts of old, minus the mini-Mars bars and Wotsits...)

And because it doesn’t have an overpowering scent, J likes to lather it on too (enough is enough, though - I got him his own pot for Christmas.) I also use their Perfect Cleanser – a balm that turns into a cleansing milk on contact with water.
Zinc is the key ingredient and Thomasina recommends eating oysters, famed for their aphrodisiac effect. I have some in the fridge in London, in mind for a light champagne supper when we return this evening. J’s been on best behaviour all Christmas. And there’s no need for the Noughties to end just yet...

Scarlett Willow